Friday, May 07, 2010

Related to the previous post, there was an uproar from some producer groups in Nebraska as well. So, in response, our educational television station aired a Nebraska producer's response. It can be accessed at the link above.

The producers assembled for the response panel are interesting. Perhaps the most interesting thing about the exercise for me is trying to figure out whether these producers are typical or representative of the "industry." One runs a 5,000 head feeding operation and has gotten many awards for her production practices. Another runs a diversified crop operation that includes some organic production. The last is a dairy producer marketing as a local producer in eastern Nebraska (and I personally buy lots of the products their company produces).

While some of the panelists were non-responsive on some of the questions asked, the general theme of their position was not altogether hostile to the views presented in Food, Inc. Indeed, I tend to think that there is much that producers and Pollan agree with. Intellectual property rights in seed, the enforcement thereof, immigration issues and packing houses, and producing what consumers want are all areas of common ground. Indeed, after watching the response, I was left wondering what, precisely, producers find objectionable about Pollan's work.

1 Comments:

To me, it seems that they have no specific problems with the film or any of the facts it presents. They seem to think "Food Inc." is somehow attacking farmers, even though I thought the film went out of its way to point out that the problem was systemic and not the fault of the individual farmers. So much of the responses are vague, but I wonder if that might be because they are untrained when it comes to media relations or because the interviewer didn't ask questions that were specific enough.

The constant refrain about choice is somewhat irksome, though. To portray obesity as solely a failure of the individual is misleading and discounts the effects of public policy.